The State of Dis-union (Part 2)

Last time out, I started telling you why I feel like we as a nation are more divided than ever. This despite the pleas for bipartisanship and putting aside differences. The president is trying to trot out solutions to some of our biggest domestic problems, some that even Democrats favor, but they don't have much chance at all of passing the Congress because the Democrats' mantra is "oppose, oppose, oppose." Well, actually that's only half the mantra. The other half is going on a little more covertly, but if you look hard enough, you'll find it. The mantra as a whole reads: "Oppose, oppose, oppose... impeach, impeach, impeach."

Yesterday we had anti-war rallies in Washington and across the country. I have no problem with protest rallies, and for the record, I was against going to war with Iraq when it was first proposed. If you don't believe me, just read this. However, we DID go in, and there's no going back, but so many people continue to go on about the fact that we did go in, and it's moot. Since we are in there, what Colin Powell said about the "Pottery Barn rule" applies: we broke it, we own it. WE have to fix the problems of Iraq, because WE caused them. To do otherwise, to leave now with the job undone sends a message to the Middle East that when the chips are down, we bail out because we can't handle a sticky situation. You think people in Lebanon who support the pro-American government are going to feel better that we bailed out of Iraq? No, they're going to think, "Oh great, we're sitting ducks for Hezbollah now because if we ask America for help, they'll say no; they're afraid to lose soldiers' lives."

So that's my take on Iraq, and yeah it's an unpopular one. However, if you read just the print coverage of these rallies, you would think that all that happened were tens of thousands of people rallied and in Washington, some Hollywood stars spoke and Jane Fonda showed up, and they want the troops out and that's that. But that's not all that happened. I watched the TV coverage, and at the Syracuse rally, the Syracuse Peace(nik) Council carried their trademark signs... which read simply, "Impeach." And that's what their signs have said since the day Bush won re-election in 2004. They couldn't defeat him (or "re-defeat him") at the ballot box, so they want to resort to impeachment. At the DC rally, people carried signs calling for impeachment on "war crimes". Cindy Sheehan is now planning on running around Vermont trying to get town councils to pass resolutions calling for Bush's impeachment... like that carries any weight, but it still draws attention. One recent Post-Standard letter-writer even went so far as to demand that Bush and Cheney both be impeached and removed from office and all troops pulled out of Iraq WITHIN A MONTH. Okay, NOTHING gets done that quickly in Washington, even if it was something a majority of Congress wanted.

The "23% Crowd", as I will henceforth call them to represent the 23% who were against the war the day of the invasion, wants Bush impeached for starting the war. But so many on the left want Bush impeached for so many other reasons, none of which constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors" either. They want him impeached for the response to Hurricane Katrina; hence, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's recent demand of a Congressional investigation into a sudden recent allegation from former FEMA head Michael Brown, who allegedly said that the White House TOLD HIM to slow down the response to New Orleans. Funny, Brownie didn't say a thing about this all those times he was UNDER OATH in front of Congress. They want Bush impeached for the domestic surveillance policy, but since that was just declared illegal by a federal judge (and the ruling was appealed), they haven't technically broken the law on that (yet). One person even claimed that Bush should be impeached because he's the brother of Neil Bush of S&L bailout infamy. Hell, if we could impeach a president for having a bad brother, we would have gone after Jimmy Carter for Billy... or Bill Clinton for Roger...

But the worst one I've heard is people claiming Bush should be impeached simply for his "incompetence." These are the people who still believe the "big lie" that the nation's economy has been a stiff since the day Bush took office. In fact, the economy has been growing for 5 years now, a recovery of Clinton and Reagan-like proportions. In today's Post-Standard Business section, the front page story talks about how corporations are chomping at the bit to offer jobs to this year's college graduates, after so many years where college grads walked right from the commencement stage to the nearest fast-food joint. I will put this in caps, because it's something people need to read: INCOMPETENCE IS NOT A BASIS FOR IMPEACHMENT. Period.

What this really boils down to is the fact that Democrats still can't get over the fact that the Republicans impeached President Clinton, and they want revenge. I was against impeachment when it happened to Clinton, because I knew he didn't do anything of a "high crime" variety, although he did lie under oath. But the proper punishment was handed down when he was disbarred for it. Impeaching Clinton caused the office of the presidency to be devalued, and now the standard for impeachment, once thought by most to require something very heinous (like say, covering up a burglary at DNC headquarters), now is thought by many to just require proving the president lied about something. The impeachment of President Clinton caused people to tie the conduct of the person in the office to the office itself. Look no further than a recent letter to the Post-Standard in which the writer called the practice of respecting the office of the presidency a "naive rule." And she wasn't even for impeachment, so you can only wonder how low the level of respect for the office is among the "Impeach Now" crowd. The fact is, a lot of these people have been trying to find something, anything to impeach Bush for since he first became president.

And it's not even about getting a conviction, because I hate to break it to all of you people who think it's so easy to remove a president from office... you need 67 senators to convict and remove the president, which means 16 Republicans have to vote guilty, and that is NEVER going to happen. You may get a simple majority in the Democrat-run Congress to return Articles of Impeachment, but a conviction isn't going to happen. All you'll get is the public spectacle of the president being impeached... again. But that's all a lot of these people want, the public spectacle, the chance to once and for all drag George W. Bush through the mud for "all the things he's done to this country."

Let me sum this up as plainly as I can: There are a lot of us in this country who really want Americans to come together, to find common ground, to get back to the politics of cooperation, rather than the politics of hyperpartisanship and doing everything you can to "get" the opposition. Impeachment will DO NOTHING to bring this country together; it will only cause further damage. If you want to go after Bush for starting this war, wait until after we're out of there. Otherwise, the message the terrorists get is that when an American leader tries to make a move to stop them, the people remove him from office. Yeah, that'll make them stop their campaign to destroy us... Furthermore, impeaching two presidents in a row tells the world that we don't think much of our leaders in this country, and if we don't, will anyone else? Dictators like Kim Jong-Il and Hugo Chavez laugh at us because they know they CAN'T BE impeached. And what happens if Bush does get impeached and then we (heaven forbid) elect Hillary president in 2008 but return the Republicans to control of the Congress? Can you say "the return of Whitewater hearings?" Because the cycle will just start again, only now it will be Republicans once again trying to "get" a Democratic president. Let's break the cycle NOW before it's too late. Let's just let Bush serve out his term and find a new president in 2008 who we can all stand behind. That's all I ask.

The State of Dis-Union (Part 1)

Right after the 2000 election, I coined the phrase "50-50 Nation" to describe how evenly divided the country was. Four years later, the press came up with their own idea of the "red states" vs. the "blue states". Well, we're still in a divided country; it may not be as blatant as it was the last two presidential election days, but the real difference is that the two sides have grown more and more vicious toward each other. The president gave his annual State of the Union address the other night, but I think it would be more appropriate to say this country is in a state of dis-union, and sadly, that state of dis-union is strong.

Any thought that the new Congress would be more bipartisan and work to bring this country together died in the first few days, as I suspected it would. I pointed out in this very blog right after the election that Democrats should remember that they didn't so much win the Congress as Republicans lost it, because of Jack Abramoff and Bob Ney and Tom DeLay and Mark Foley... ESPECIALLY Mark Foley... Well, they've forgotten; they are now quick to declare (with their letter and column-writing minions behind them) that they took power because of Iraq, and ONLY because of Iraq, so they have carte blanche to tell the president what to do on that. Heck, now that they're in charge of the Congress, they have carte blanche to tell the president what to do on ANYTHING... that's how they feel. And more and more it seems like what they're telling the president to do is take pretty much everything he's proposed on anything and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Now I understand that the major focus of opposition is the "surge" in Iraq, and that Republicans are also opposing this. However, Democrats are using this leverage to open fire on everything Bush has proposed. The mantra is "oppose, oppose, oppose"... not that they have the answers themselves, or in many cases, the right answers.

Let's look point by point at some of the things the president wants to do. He has proposed a plan to fix the health insurance problem in this country. After years of nothing from the Republican Party as to the growing number of uninsured Americans (unless you count "no Hillary-care"), Bush wants to try to fix the problem himself, WITHOUT government mandates. So he proposed a system whereby those who cannot afford health insurance receive tax credits to get their own insurance. Great idea, but how do we pay for this? Simple, those who receive over a higher threshold of benefits will be taxed on those benefits. Yeah, it's a tax increase, but considering everything else gets taxed these days, you may as well get the money where you can. And the point is those who are getting taxed are the ones getting over $7500 in benefits on an individual basis and $15,000 as a family... that's a LOT of money in benefits. If you're getting that much, you're probably in pretty good shape financially.

Now one would think the Democrats would LOVE the fact that the rich are getting hit once again to pay for the poor's health insurance... nope, wrong. Instead, we get liberal nutjob Paul Krugman of the New York Times telling President Bush that he "doesn't know what it's like to be uninsured." Well, Mr. Krugman, considering the generous salary and benefits you probably pull down as a New York Times and nationally syndicated columnist, YOU probably don't know either. This is the best way to allow the private sector to take care of itself. We don't need a government takeover of health care, and we don't need mandates like the one in Massachusetts, where you now are REQUIRED to have health insurance. Their rationale is, "Well, you're required to have auto insurance if you drive a car." True, but note the qualifier: "IF you drive a car." Some don't, and they don't have auto insurance, and that's fine. So by your rationale, if you live in Massachusetts and you don't have health insurance, is it therefore illegal to BE ALIVE? This law is just begging for a test case where someone gets convicted of not having health insurance... cuz when it gets to the Supreme Court, that law will get struck down faster than you can say, "Unconstitutional."

Bush also proposed raising the CAFE (gas mileage) standards on automobiles and cutting back on our reliance on foreign oil by setting a goal for using more ethanol and less gasoline by 2017. This is exactly what Democrats have wanted us to do for years... and guess what, many of them OPPOSE THIS ONE TOO! Why? Because it's not enough. The environmentalists don't want us to go a step at a time, or as I would also put it, RATIONALLY. They want to take the irrational step of going from 0 to 60 on not using oil and stopping greenhouse emissions, which would take our economy from 60 to 0 in no time flat. And so, they will stop Bush's piecemeal approach from happening, and just like with health care, the Democrats are hoping that Americans get so upset at nothing being done that they will ultimately throw their hands up, say, "Screw it," and go along with the all-at-once approach that liberals want. "Oppose, oppose, oppose..."

Which brings us back to Iraq, and the real viciousness between red and blue. The Democrats pretty much declared who they are as a party when they chose Senator Jim Webb of Virginia to give their response to the president's State of the Union. In case you missed it, Senator Webb attended a get-together of freshman Congressman held at the White House, and basically told the president to shove it when he tried to have a friendly conversation with the senator. As you might expect, the senator in his speech rattled off a litany of failures, including what he termed the "predictable and predicted disarray" in Iraq. Excuse me? Who exactly predicted this? The 23% of Americans who were against the war the day we invaded? Certainly not your fellow senators like Kerry and Clinton who voted for the use of force in Iraq.

And so, a Senate committee passed its long-awaited non-binding resolution showing its disapproval of the move to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq. Vice President Cheney replied by saying that wasn't going to change a thing. Well, he's right! Senator Joe Biden (an, ahem, presidential candidate) has now said that he will introduce legislation that invokes the constitutionally mandated powers of the Congress to end the war. Well it's about damn time that they figured out what they can and can't do; it certainly could have saved them two weeks of empty threats about cutting off funding if they'd actually gone and READ Article 1. The only way Congress can unilaterally end this war is to revoke the original authorization of the use of force, passed in 2002. That's it. Otherwise, it's unconstitutional.

Not that it matters, because liberals seem to have a hazy definition of what passes for constitutional these days anyway. Yup, I'm gonna talk impeachment... next time. After all, this entry is threatening to become like most State of the Union speeches are themselves: long-winded...

Parents Just Don't Understand

Let me say first of all that since I'm not a parent, I guess it can be said that I'm in no position to be able to judge other people's parenting skills. But I know when it's clear that a parent's not doing enough, and when a parent may be doing too much, and there have been recent examples of both that need to be mentioned.

First the case of a parent doing too much... down in Johnson City near Binghamton, the mother of a female high school basketball player filed a Title IX complaint because there are no cheerleaders at girls basketball games. She said this makes the girls feel like "second-class citizens", so there needs to be equality in who the cheerleaders root for. As a result, federal education officials ruled that cheerleaders have to go to girls games as well as boys games; both home and away, there has to be equal representation.

Last I checked, there have been girls sporting events in high schools for some 35 years now, since Title IX was originally passed. Nobody complained before that there weren't cheerleaders at the girls' games, and let's face it, people I've talked to have said it but nobody wants to put it in print, so I will... there's a reason that girls want to cheer boys and only boys. It's high school, girls like boys, so girls want to cheer for boys. I know when it's there in black-and-white, it looks incredibly sexist, but it's the truth. Just ask the cheerleaders themselves... one cheerleader for Whitney Point (about 20 minutes from Binghamton) said, "It feels funny when we do it," and she admitted to forgetting the name of one of the players. Other cheerleaders have just plain chosen not to stay on the squad if they have to go to both boys and girls games. Another result is that since girls' home games often are at the same time as the boys' away games, schools have chosen just to have their cheerleaders cheer at home games only.

The effects of this ruling have not reached the Syracuse area yet, fortunately, so last night when I went to the West Genesee-Henninger basketball game, we had cheerleaders from both schools at the game, co-mingling, doing cheers for each other, the whole nine yards, like it's supposed to be. We could have done without one of the Henninger cheerleaders making an inappropriate gesture at West Genny's student section after one of their cheers late in the game with Henninger winning, but I digress... I don't see the road team not bringing it's cheerleaders as a sign that they're complying with a federal ruling, I see it as a lack of interest, even showing the home team up. And as for the girls' games, the girls are used to playing without cheerleaders, and the extra noise from the cheers drowns out directions from the coach and just plain annoys them. Don't even get me into the whole "is cheerleading a sport?" debate, but girls who play your regular team sports have been known to look down on their cheerleading counterparts.

Long story short, there is a way things have been done for years and call me conservative, but there's no need to change it, not because one parent got upset over it. Incidentally, was this because her daughter actually had a problem with it, or is it because Mom decided to become a crusader and use her daughter as an excuse? We've certainly seen THAT one before... a parent using their kid as a reason to start a movement against something. Michael Newdow, anyone?

Now, on to the parents who don't do enough... four families have sued MySpace and owner News Corp. because their teenage daughters were sexually assaulted by older men they met on MySpace. First of all, let me say that there is no condoning what these predators did, not for any reason. However, ever since it became apparent that adult males were trying to find 14 and 15-year old girls on MySpace (and that said teenage girls were often lying about their ages to attract older men), people have done everything in their power to get the word out. Hell, this has been the case since the Internet first came into being. We've heard these horror stories for at least a decade about and older guy posing as someone younger, meeting a teenage girl, getting her to trust him, and then when they meet, horrible things happen. For years, parents have been cautioned to keep tabs on their teenagers' Internet habits, to make sure they know where their kids are going when they go out at night, even though it will certainly upset their kids.

Now don't think I'm blaming the parents of these kids... believe me, I want to, but they've suffered enough, so I won't heap the criticism directly on them for what happened, but getting the lawyers involved is where I draw the line. The stated reason for this lawsuit is not that MySpace hasn't done anything to stop these things from happening, but that they haven't done it quickly enough. One of the lawyers involved had this to say: "Blaming the families of abuse victims who were solicited online, as some have done, is a cynical excuse that ignores the fact that social networking sites can lead to heinous abuse by Internet predators. It is now clear that MySpace recognizes that serious security problems exist."

Fine, they recognize it, they're doing something about it, so WHY SUE THEM? Extracting your pound of flesh (or in this case, pound of cash) is not going to stop this from happening. MySpace touts that they have worked harder on trying to stop interaction between older males and young females, but like I said, these girls often lie about their ages, and in that case, what can you do? It all comes back to the parents and their responsibility to watch over their children and keep them safe, and to do it by any means necessary. Millions of people use MySpace for legitimate and legal reasons, why put their future enjoyment of this site in jeopardy? After all, these things never end with just a smattering of lawsuits, especially if these families win. Usually when that happens, the floodgates open.

I guess what I'm trying to say is something I find myself saying a lot... DO NOT GET LAWYERS INVOLVED. Just try your best to be a good parent, keep your kids safe and happy. If you see an injustice that affects your child, well first you might want to take a moment to find out if it truly does affect your child and not just you... and secondly, it's all right to take up the cause but try not to do it in a way that can potentially affect millions of people who shouldn't be affected by this. All I'm saying is you can make things better for your child without inadvertently messing things up for a lot of other people.

The Good Guys Should Get the Headlines

Something wasn't right about the Baseball Hall of Fame announcements last week. Normally when we get to see the results of the baseball writers' vote, all the talk is about who got in, and a lot of the time about who just missed getting in. This time around, all the press went to a guy who didn't even come close.

Mark McGwire got just 23% of the vote in his first time on the Hall of Fame ballot. I knew he wasn't going to get the required 75% to get in, but that was stunning that so many writers voted against him because of the cloud of suspicion surrounding him concerning steroid use. At the same time, it sent a message that I think needed to be sent. The baseball community does have a way of cleaning up its messes, although many think it doesn't. While the actual Major League rules on drug and steroid use were weak and ineffective for so long (and many think they still are), baseball acts as its own high society, willing to shun you if you slip up.

That's exactly what has happened with the Boys of Steroids from the last decade. McGwire went from hero to anti-hero in the amount of time it took to say, "I'm not here to discuss my past" to Congress a couple years back. Rafael Palmeiro swore up and down that he never used performance-enhancing drugs, promptly tested positive for a banned substance, blamed it on a teammate, and as Mike Tyson might say, faded into Bolivia. Sammy Sosa suddenly went from 50-60 home runs a year to barely getting the ball out of the infield as Palmeiro's Baltimore teammate the first year of steroid testing. Now Sosa's trying desperately to come back but nobody wants him. And as for the poster boy for steroid use, Barry "I Thought It Was Flaxseed Oil" Bonds... well, we find out this week that he may have tested positive for amphetamines last season, and he promptly did the Palmeiro thing and blamed a teammate, then apologized for that but wouldn't deny testing positive. Before that, there was the story that one of the anonymous urine samples that tested positive for 'roids in 2003 belonged to Bonds. In a recent ESPN.com poll, there were about as many people who wanted Bonds to even play this year as writers who wanted Big Mac in the Hall of Fame. In other words, we can't wait for Bonds to just go away like his peers have.

Oh by the way, in case you weren't paying attention, two guys DID get in the Hall of Fame this year, with two of the highest vote totals in history. Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn embody everything that is good about the game, but they had to take a backseat to all the talk of McGwire, which is unfortunate. How quickly we all pointed to Sosa and McGwire's pursuit of the home run record in 1998 as the real reason that baseball recovered from the 1994-95 players strike, and forgot about Ripken's pursuit of a different record. In 1995, when Cal passed Lou Gehrig for most consecutive games played, THAT is what made fans remember what baseball was all about. Tony Gwynn hit about 135 home runs in his career. That wasn't his game; he got you hits, he always got you hits. He cranked out over 3000 hits from a body that looked like it was fueled by cheeseburgers rather than by "the cream" or "the clear". Both played the game with child-like enthusiasm, a smile, and a dedication that grumps like Bonds don't understand and never will understand. Gwynn now coaches baseball at his alma mater, San Diego State, in a stadium that bears his name. Ripken had a whole level of Little League Baseball named after him. The only way Bonds will ever have anything named after him is if they open some sort of institute for failed marriages, tax evasion, and steroid abuse.

As for who didn't get in but should... well this is getting away from the original subject (which I tend to do anyway), but I think the people who deserved to get in got in this time around. There's a lot of talk about Jim Rice and Goose Gossage, but all I ever seem to remember from Rice is 4 great years (1975-78) followed by several average years followed by several baserunning blunders that helped cost Boston a world championship in '86. All I remember from Gossage is giving up the home run to George Brett in the 1980 ALCS, giving up the "pine tar" home run to Brett three years later, and giving up a World Series-clinching homer to Kirk Gibson in 1984. Maybe it's because of the eras they played in, when saves and home runs were less plentiful, but I don't see them ranking among the "dominant" players of their generation. Opponents feared Bruce Sutter. They feared Eddie Murray and Dave Winfield. Those guys are in the Hall.

Unfortunately, some of the "dominant" and "feared" players from that era aren't even mentioned anymore because of their drug problems, but baseball took care of them in their prime, before we had to worry about whether it would keep them out of the Hall of Fame. The real tragedy of the Boys of Steroids is that we didn't catch on to them until the end of their careers, when the numbers were in the books, the records were broken, and we had to wonder what we would do with them five years after retirement when their names appear on the Hall of Fame ballot. This will be as tough to stomach as it is now ridding the game of these people. Then again, some people will never be for that. I leave you with one question: which is the bigger travesty, that there were voters who DIDN'T vote for Ripken or Gwynn this year, or that there were 6 people who DID vote for Jose Canseco, the original Steroid Boy who started this whole mess?

Just the Facts...

I'm a pretty straightforward person, I like things to be told to me quickly and to the point. So when it comes to watching the news, I pretty much want to know what happened, and that's it. I don't need any "analysis", "spin", "viewer reaction", or anything like that. And this is why I can't stand the news media.

First of all, there's the feeling that we need to know what celebrities are doing all the time, and that sometimes this is bigger than the major events of the day. I really wonder if the network news heads actually cringe when REAL news breaks out because it means they have to get off their butts and COVER something. Of course, it has to be a pretty major event for that to happen, and what some networks consider to be a "pretty major event" is subjective. Consider for example, that when former President Gerald Ford passed away last week, CBS didn't even bother to interrupt programming to break the story.

There's a time and place for stuff like Brad & Angelina, or TomKat, or who Britney flashed this week... shows like "Entertainment Tonight", "Abcess Hollywood", errr... I mean "Access Hollywood", "Extra", stuff like that. If I'm tuning in to watch the news, that's what I want... the effing NEWS.

I usually just read the newspaper instead of turning on the TV for news, but newspapers aren't even immune. In order to keep their readership (cuz unfortunately there are people who have to have their celebrity gossip to survive), they plaster the celebrity news on page 2 or page 6 or somewhere up front in the front section so you can get it to it right away. I usually skip it...

Then there's the question of whether or not there is bias in the media. It's pretty simple... there IS, always has been; as long as there have been newspapers, there has been slant. There was the age of "yellow journalism", where the William Randolph Hearsts and Joseph Pulitzers of the world tried to not only print the current events, but cause them as well. For a long time, the New York Post was the "Democrat" paper in New York, but since News Corp. bought it some time ago, it's now pretty slanted to the right, but the New York Times is slanted to the left, so there's your balance. Sure we hear about the pretense of objectivity all the time, but the fact is people can report the facts all they want, there's always going to be the matter of syntax and semantics and how you write it, and human nature just takes over. I'm not complaining about this, but you should know it's there before you go whining about how such and such newspaper always criticizes the president or always gives him a pass.

What bothers me is when a newspaper shoves their slant right down your throat. Back when I was in Chambersburg, I occasionally got the Sunday Washington Post and for a while I read the Baltimore Sun to get the "big-city" perspective on things. I stopped because I couldn't stand certain things they did... like putting an news "analysis" piece on the front page above the fold like it's the top news story of the day. Pretty easy for someone who's reading quickly to miss that part and think that what the commentator wants you to think happened is what actually happened. And occasionally, they wouldn't even tell you it was an analysis piece, it would be made up to look just like a news story. I still don't trust anything that the Sub-Standard, errr, Post-Standard prints that is written by someone from the New York Times or Washington Post; I immediately presume there's a slant to it.

Speaking of which, there's a reason we call it the Sub-Standard. Do you think you guys could actually PAY ATTENTION to the headlines you write sometimes? A week ago, the front page story on the execution of Saddam Hussein ended a few pages later under the headline "US Judge Denies Request to Stop Execution." NOWHERE in the story did it mention this fact... due to space issues, they probably chopped that part out. That's fine, but when you do that, you might want to fix the freakin' headline to reflect the content of your now-edited article! Here's another recent headline, and you can make up your own joke for this one, it was about the protests over the NYPD shooting of an innocent man leaving his bachelor party... "Fifth Avenue Filled With Police Shooting Protesters"

But getting back to bias... we always hear people complaining about Fox News Channel, saying it leans heavily to the right. Compared to CNN, yes it does... but that's because CNN leans to the left. Consider the coverage when the Democrats assumed control of the Congress this week. The coverage was headed by CNN's most unashamedly liberal anchor, Jack Cafferty, whose normal functions include an hourly segment featuring e-mails from viewers whose political views sit just to the left of Abbie Hoffman, and also a regular feature called "War on the Middle Class", which talks about the many ways that corporations are destroying America. Need more proof? As I was doing my 10 minutes on the treadmill the other day, I was watching a segment about our disputes with Iran, under the headline, "What Foreign Policy?" Now THAT'S slant!

All in all, it's pretty tough to actually know what's going on so you have to pick your spots and ALWAYS consider the source. Like I said, if it's the NY Times or Washington Post or CNN, it's going to be slanted to the left. If it's the New York Post or Fox News Channel, it's going to be slanted to the right. And it's worse online... if it's Salon.com, it's going to be slanted WAY to the left, and if it's Newsmax.com, it's going to be slanted WAY to the right. With so much filler and so much, well, crap to deal with, it's no wonder people's attention span for the news is smaller than most other things, so they only read the first few paragraphs of a story or tune in for a few seconds on TV. It doesn't have to be this way, but until somebody comes up with a better way, I guess we're stuck with it. I just hope it doesn't take another major world event like 9-11 to make the media come to their senses again.